| Oh my... |
[Jan. 30th, 2009|01:44 pm] |
My shiny new 22" monitor arrived today. And shiny doesn't do the bezel justice - they weren't kidding when they refered to it as "Piano Finish". But it runs great, looks great (although I need to tweak some settings a little, as WoW looks a tad too dark), and makes the monitors sitting on either side look pale by comparison. (I have to decide what I want to do about my setup now, as three monitors makes for a slightly crowded desktop - might be time to retire the old 15") |
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| The calm before... |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|03:07 pm] |
...well, before the continued addiction. Currently dabbling in Fallout 3 while I wait for the WoW expansion launch on Friday. (Fallout is a lot less painful than Oblivion was, and closer to the original two games than I was afraid it would be. Not perfect though, but still very playable)
WoW has slowed a great deal, and I'm desperately trying to build my gold balance back up after doing some last-minute gearing up of my Paladin.
I'll probably be attending the midnight release at ebgames at the mall nearby (well, I'd be awake then anyway so I thought it'd be something different to 'celebrate' the launch with), after which I get to start the 70-80 grind on my 6 70s (along with a Death Knight i'll be rolling once the rush in the DK starting zone cools down a little).
Current plan is to start with my raiding-rogue (Ringleprouse), then my alt-prot-warrior (Dinglemouse), maybe my bank-alt-rogue next (Pringlerouse), then spread my time between my hunter (Kringlelouse), paladin (Binglerouse) and priest (Mingledouse). Leveling won't be too much of a chore, but working through the new profession recipes will take a while - not to mention the time and gold to be invested in my miner/engineer (Dingle) in order to start gathering the mats required to make what will probably be the post-release status symbol mount (leather jacket not included):
Snap is proving better than Xnet was (which isn't really difficult), but it looks like I'll be moving (yet again) to cable with Telstraclear in about a month thanks to them finally getting permission to wire up the block of flats I live in. I've also been offered the first month free, which will cover the $100 charge for leaving Snap within 12 months of signing up so I won't be out of pocket on the deal, plus there's no contract with Telstra on the new connection. Just have to invest in a router to replace my adsl modem, as the cable modem only has one ethernet port and I'll need to connect both my pc and the VFX phone adapter to it.
I'm having more reason to shop with Ascent in future as well; my MX400 mouse has developed right-button issues, and when I contacted ascent about it, they can 'forward replace' it. Basically they send me a replacement (with no charge for shipping), and I send back the broken one I have after the replacement arrives (I pay for shipping it back). A very nice policy on their part.
Well, I'm feeling snack-ish, so time for another batch of roasted peanuts. (I'm not addicted; I can stop any time I want. Which would mean more if I actually wanted to stop ;) |
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| Surrounded. |
[May. 28th, 2008|10:28 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hardware, upgrade | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | WoW - Background music in Mount Hyjal | ] |
I was supposed to start saving for my planned trip up to Auckland in July to visit my family for a week, but yet again plans fail to keep up with opportunity. So I now I have a shiny new set of 5.1 speakers (admittedly with the bass turned down so I don't annoy the neighbours) gracing the desktop.
I can start saving next week. Again. |
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| Prognosis: Less stressful |
[Dec. 13th, 2007|08:42 pm] |
I've installed the new motherboard in my pc (the right one, this time), and all is going surprisingly smoothly (which is to say, it's going smoothly and I'm surprised). XP has been installed, and most of my usual programs have been nailed into position (in a manner of speaking) with the XP updates under way atm. (I'm giving the new XP service pack release candidate a try, being insanely curious about such things - not to mention the fact I need to find new things to go wrong with the computer, and this looks like the easiest way to sort it out).
I finished watching Life a couple of days ago, and it was quite unexpected to actually have them not only give the brief season a solid end, but also to have them introduce a believeable hook for a second season if by some miracle they're able to proceed with one (considering the writer's strike in the US, and the tendancy of US networks to kill off shows that perform the miracle of being both entertaining and intelligent). |
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| One less worry... |
[Jun. 12th, 2007|01:14 am] |
My old Logitech cordless mouse has been showing its age, so I was relieved to find it's still covered by it's warranty (with a year of the 3 year cover still remaining). So I was happy to bring home a shiny new MX1000 this afternoon - with luck I'll get at least another two years of use out of it (although the temptation to replace it with a Revolution MX is quite strong).
The remainder of my upgrade has gone comparatively painlessly (after the purchase of a pci USB card to get my keyboard working properly) - my system is now an Athlon64 x2-3600 with 2gb of ddr2-800 (in single-channel mode) and a 256mb Radeon X1950 Pro. I'm tempted to replace the power supply with one from a more trustworthy brand, and to replace my non-Vista-compatible Soundblaster Live! soundcard with something more recent in lineage, but other than that things are going well. (Stalker runs nicely with that 2nd gig of memory, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is fun. I've also managed to get a surprising distance into the WoW endgame as well, but the need to group with other players keeps surfacing with often expensive results.) |
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| Dual cores of happiness. |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|02:14 am] |
I've started assembling the bits and pieces for my next upgrade, and now have a shiny new dual-core athlon64 sitting atop my pc in its shiny new unopened box. Just need the memory (thinking of 2x 1gb ddr2-667 or -800, depending on prices), an AM2 motherboard, and the confidence to gut my pc again.
I've been busy with WoW as well, having found myself in charge of a new guild after a mass defection from an underperforming guild. And I've redone my UI, which looks more like this.
( Click here to see the big picture. ) |
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| Busy busy busy... |
[Mar. 30th, 2007|04:03 am] |
I probably should get to bed, but I want to convert a couple more episodes of Primeval to add to my dvd of stuff-to-watch-up-north (along with the rest of Torchwood, some Stargate Atlantis, a couple of episodes of The Dresden Files, and The Iron Giant. I know I won't have time to watch all of it, it's just nice to have the option available.
So far this evening (well, technically 'this morning') I've already updated my toolkit dvd with latest K-Lite codec pack and latest build of AVG before burning it to dvd, as well as updated my file archives with my latest downloaded 'stuff'. Needless to say, I'm probably going to be doing a little tech-support with my mum's computer while I'm there, and possibly my sister's family's machine, so it's best to have this stuff on hand.
Oh, I've kind of been involved in some drama on WoW, having left the guild I'd been with for a few months with a group of disgruntled fellow guildies, and am now the guildmaster of a shiny new guild which will hopefully get into endgame content sometime soon (with my main having reached the level 70 plateau a little while back, and my primary alt nearing 50). All in all, my timing with this trip isn't the best but I'm sure there will at least be the smoking, charred framework of the new guild remaining when I get back.
I've been enjoying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well - the new patch appears to fix some of the annoying little glitches that I wrote off as either, a) "We didn't have time to polish off the annoying rough edges" or b) "The publisher didn't let us fix these issues - wait for the first patch". Needless to say, I'm looking forward to spending more time hunting mutants and avoiding the Russian military when I get back home. Oh, and I've been enjoying some more of Oblivion - the x1950 is proving itself a powerful little beastie.
[later]
Well, all converted, and will be burnt onto dvd+rw while I sneak off to bed. Busy day tomorrow, and I think I'll have to make a dentist appointment to make once I get back home next week. [sigh] |
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| Aha, toy time! |
[Mar. 28th, 2007|05:24 pm] |
(Ok, the video quality is better than this little image portrays, it's just the only picture I've been able to find of it online)
In honor of my upcoming expedition to Auckland over the weekend I've splashed out on a shiny new mp4 player to supplement my not-so-shiny old mp3 player. It's really quite nifty (and will be much more useful once I can afford to buy a memory card or two to supplement its meagre 512mb of capacity), and I was surprised at how watchable the 2.2" 220x176 display is. (I've also been exploring other handheld media players that they make, and I have to say some of them look more appealing than an ipod does)
Unfortunately there wasn't a paper manual in the box with the player, so I had to install MS's Word viewer to read the electronic version on the utility mini-cd. Fortunately it's not an awful engrish number (well, not awful engrish), and gets across enough for the device to be usable.
Anyway, as far as features go there's the FM radio (ick), mp3 playback, avi playback (albeit a specifically formatted/configured avi which may be xvid), picture viewer (jpgs), text file display (unfortunately the text is too big to really be useable for ebooks), voice and line-in recording, and Tetris. Yes, I have my own colour handheld version of tetris. It rocks (although it's kind of tricky with those awful controls), and will have to tide me over until I give in and buy myself a DS sometime down the track. Oh, it also has its own internal speaker but it's mostly useful when there's little ambient noise, and is basically useless the rest of the time. But it gets points for having it at all.
Now that I've got it in my sweaty little paws I'm having a hard time deciding what to put on it to watch on my way up north - I converted an episode of Battlestar Galactica to see what kind of compression the conversion utility gives, and it turned the 350mb dsrip into a much more palatable 130mb .avi that was eminently watchable and gives space for maybe 3-4 episodes, which would be less than the quoted 4 hours battery life when watching video. Maybe I'll finally finish off season one of Torchwood? Some MST3K? Stargate Atlantis? Ah, the possibilities... |
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| Some Sundays are improved by sleep. |
[Jan. 7th, 2007|04:18 pm] |
And I think I'm about to improve mine with a little extra.
It's been a pleasant week on the whole, with the acquisition of a shiny new monitor (which is great, albeit without using its speakers - I have standards after all, and a quite competent pair of speakers that do all I need them to). Admittedly, I'm still adjusting to the ever-so-slightly pixelated nature of an lcd monitor, and it's not quite as flattering when playing back video, but WoW in widescreen is quite impressive. (NFS Carbon in widescreen is pretty impressive as well, but oddly enough Star Wars Lego II didn't shine quite the same; i have high hopes for Marvel Ultimate Alliance, provided the video card can keep up with the increased resolution) |
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| Grrr. |
[Nov. 19th, 2006|01:16 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hardware, upgrade | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cranky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Cotton, Lloyd & Christian - I Go To Pieces | ] |
Nothing like yet another hardware failure to make me wish I lived in the US where I could sell my blood for fun and profit. I'm currently trying to work out how to get enough money to replace one of my monitors (ideally with a 19" widescreen lcd, which are disturbingly well priced atm for all they're out of my budgetary range still, but worlds better than the crappy old 15" I've returned to active duty), but it's looking like I need to give bank robbery some thought. (Maybe if I can find a bank handy to a computer store)
Oh well, back to the mindless timewasters while I squint and ponder. |
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| Vistaville |
[Oct. 10th, 2006|08:04 pm] |
Finally gave Vista a second try, and I have to say, it's working pretty well after a few hours spent installing software and trying a couple of games.
The tipping point for trying it this time has been the release of Vista-compatible Logitech drivers to let me use my MX1000 and configure the buttons to suit me, and the discovery of a workaround to allow installation of the Intellitype v5.5 drivers so I can configure and use the hotkeys on my MS keyboard. (I rely on the hotkeys especially, to navigate between various folders I access frequently)
My old Creative Live! SE soundcard is working fairly well (although the gameport failed to install, but with my gamepad being USB that's not an issue), and the rest of my hardware has installed fairly seamlessly.
Aero is a tad more polished than my last install (I think it was the Beta2 release), although still not without its hiccups (most notably corruption of the screen after accessing the screensaver preview and after playing a game, but these are probably as much an issue with Nvidia's drivers as with MS). I've disabled it in favour of the non-accelerated UI though, which is working well enough for my needs.
I still miss having an 'up one level' button on the explorer screen when navigating directories; exactly why the UI team thought it would be a good idea to remove it escapes me. But I'm learning to compensate, so I guess I'll just keep muttering about it under my breath until either it's reintroduced or a 3rd party app adds it back in.
I was surprised by the performance of WoW; framerate seems about the same, but the view distance for mobs/characters seems noticably further than playing under XP. I've yet to give any other games a try yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic based on my current experiences. |
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| Everyone needs some free space. |
[Jul. 12th, 2006|06:30 pm] |
I've just installed my new (well, 2nd hand but new-ish) 300gb hd, and have as a result regained mine. In a manner of speaking (mmmm, so much capacity). It's a 300gb Seagate Sata/300 drive, which will hopefully last me quite a while.
For my next upgrade I was considering replacing the 2x 512mb sticks of ddr400 I have currently installed with a single 1gb stick, but I'm now tempted to replace the grotty old 2nd-hand 15" crt I have hooked up as a 2nd display with a cheap (and probably equally 2nd hand, but ideally less grotty) lcd monitor. I have to finish catching up with the bills though, which will take two or three months, but after that there is much in the way of possibility... |
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| Some days are like that... |
[Jul. 4th, 2006|05:28 pm] |
Well, it looks like I'll be replacing my other harddrive pretty soon. (As in as soon as I have the money) Fortunately I've been able to keep it working long enough to save all the data on there, but I'll be taking the drive out (and I'd love to shoot it afterwards) once I've transferred the last of the data. (At this point in time, there's about 50gb to go)
Needless to say, my dietary plans hiccuped today. (I'm thinking of actually going back to bed as soon as I get this done; for some reason, I'm exhausted) |
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| Well, colour me... Um, what colour is bad poetry? |
[Jun. 26th, 2006|01:43 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | hardware, pc, quiz | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Aled Jones - Walking In The Air | ] |
So that's XP reinstalled again. (And I took advantage of the opportunity to give the Vista beta a try. No support for virtual optical drive software for x64, nero hasn't been ported and v7 won't install on vista, and only generic drivers for mouse and keyboard. Having said that, the base system is actually quite impressive. Roll on more 64bit-vista-compatible software, and I'll seriously look at trying it again.)
( It's a quiz. And silly. ) |
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| What do you get when you combine frustration and joy? |
[Jun. 17th, 2006|09:16 pm] |
I'm not sure what it's called, but the two words sum up my latest computer upgrade pretty well. I've replaced the motherboard in my system with an MSI K8N Neo3 that's allowed me to skip a generation of video cards, and install an MSI Nvidia 7600GS to replace my dodgy old Radeon 9550.
And I have to say, the new video card is awesome. Unfortunately the motherboard itself really brings the phrase "steaming pile of manure" to mind, as demonstrated by the extended period of cursing that accompanied my efforts to get the wretched thing to work properly. (And yes, I'm using it now so as you can no doubt assure me, it isn't that bad. But it took about 10 hours of aforementioned cursing to get it in this state.
Needless to say, I'm rather exhausted from the experience. I managed to escape and crawl into bed at about 5am, after starting the install process at about 6pm last night. The physical changeover of old-to-new parts was fairly straightforward, and took about an hour. But that was the easy part. I tentatively finished the process of beating the XP install into submission at about 4am, and wanted to then try something fun for a change, to finally see the video card in use. (Oblivion runs fine at 1024x768 with settings autodetected as "High", and Black & White 2 looks great. Even Rise of Legends looks pretty good. And FEAR runs fine, although in hindsight survival-horror wasn't the best genre to try when sleep-deprived.
With luck, though, things will stay stable enough to avoid the process of provoking self-injurous behaviour that installing XP was. (I actually wanted to try the Vista beta, but I just couldn't get it to play nicely and install on the partition I had in mind for it. Sigh.) |
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